


Morning Afters and Dealbreakers

by freebirdslu



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff and Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-10 17:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freebirdslu/pseuds/freebirdslu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU where Steve is on shore leave and lucks into a receptive Danny</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Second thought mornings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny mulls his situation

“This place...”  Danny trailed off, words temporarily eluding him.  A rare thing indeed.

He kept looking at the sun glinting off the Manhattan skyline.  He needed to pretend that he could ignore the warmth of the guy's - Steve's - chest snug against his back.  For just a little longer.

They're naked save for the rumpled white sheet dipping low over their hips.  It makes it pretty hard for Danny to lose himself in the glint of sunlight off glass towers and the more than respectable swathe of Central Park laid out before him.

The tightly toned forearm wrapped around his waist, the hairy legs entwined with his shorter but even hairier ones and the hard-on against his sore ass made it impossible.

Swallowing a sigh, he flipped onto his back.  What can't be ignored, must be faced and all that.

His bedpartner - Steve - eased away, leaving pleasantly cooled climate controlled air to take the place of his warmth against Danny's body.

Danny caught himself in an unconscious pout.  Giving his thirsty body a stern talking to, he scrubbed a hand down his face.  The stubble he'd left work with yesterday afternoon had gone viral and left his face a prickly mess.

He hadn't gone out last night with the intention of getting laid so he hadn't bothered with his Pre-Tomcat-on-the-prowl routine.  Not that the guy - Steve - seemed to mind last night when Danny’s scruff had been scoring up his thighs as Danny had sought a mouthful of his...

Feeling an ominous tightening down below Danny spoke from between his fingers.  Essentials first. Getting a grip on his ungovernable hormones second.

“Got any coffee in this showplace, Babe?  I'm no good without it.” 

The gender-neutral, New Jersey endearment had slipped out innocently but the memory of calling Steve that repeatedly while Danny had been riding high is anything but.

Steve gave a rumble that passes for a yes before pressing a kiss to Danny’s shoulder and sliding out of the bed.  He left the sheet and a blurred impression of acres of tanned flesh peppered with colorful tattoos behind.

Danny snapped his head forward again when he found his eyes drifting sideways to get a better look.  He levered up against the padded headboard, plowing his hands through his wrecked hair before dropping them into his lap. 

Should he get up?  Get dressed to start on his trek of shame back to his side of the river?  It was Saturday morning, so he'd undoubtedly be meeting a couple of dozen commuters in the same boat.  They'd shoot each other small smiles of commensuration whilst shrinking in on themselves to guard others against their BO.

Yesterday, before he'd let the rookie browbeat him into going out to a club, he'd have wagered hundreds that he was past putting himself in that situation.  And lost.  Spectacularly.

He straightened against the headboard as Steve's ruffled crew cut popped through the doorway.  His heart lurched an embarrassing lurch when he saw that he balanced a tray bearing a French press full of Danny's elixir.  Among other things.

“All this for me? Babe?”  There he went with that again.

Steve nodded yes to his question and the broad sweep of Danny’s hand at the contents of the tray.  He also ducked his head a little as if embarrassed.  

It was not, Danny assured himself, nine kinds of adorable. 

“Yeah.  Figured we could use the caffeine.”  A spark of heat lit his greenish-blue eyes as they fell on where the Egyptian cotton skimmed Danny waist.   “And the carbs.”

Danny gulped but didn't say anything.  Instead he picked up a triangle of buttered toast and bit into it with a relish.  The gurgle of his stomach thanked him.

Steve had slipped into the soft grey denim that Danny had shoved off him last night.  Hitching them up, he layered his ridiculous body on the bed before picking through a bowl of fruit from the tray that he’d set between them.

He idly popped grapes and pieces of cantaloupe while Danny inhaled two dainty China cups of coffee and plowed through almost all of the toast.  He yanked his hand back in the middle of reaching for the second to last triangle. 

“Uh, you want in on this?”  He risked a full-on look at Steve to find his gaze intent on Danny’s butter slick lips. 

His voice husky, he said while lifting the tray off the bed, “I’m fine.  Had some oatmeal in the kitchen.”

Danny has some vague complaint about not being finished yet brewing in the back of his throat.  But it died as Steve settled back on the bed, hooked a finger in the sheet and dragged it away. 

Danny’s breath shorted out as his bared junk was given a thorough appraisal from under Steve's long lashes.  His dick grew thick and demanding under the hot gaze and Danny's hips twitched off the mattress without his express consent.

Steve placed a warm, heavy hand on his lower stomach and dragged his eyes up to Danny’s droopy ones.

“Can I?”  He flicked a glance down at Danny's crotch as if he needed the clarification.

Danny answered by forking all five fingers of his left hand in Steve's slightly damp hair and pushing him down.  He went easily, groaning before trapping the slick tip between his red lips.  Danny joined him, his groans turning into gasps and lewd moans as Steve took him deeper and deeper.

He flooded Steve's questing mouth in an embarrassingly short time; the silky glide of his tongue all along the shaft coupled with the expert hollowing of his cheeks made sure of that. 

After he'd wrung the last drop out of Danny's spent cock, Steve lifted his head, blinking up at Danny owlishly.  Matter-of-factly scrubbing the back of his hand against his wet chin, he mumbled, “Shower?”

Throwing his head back, Danny stared up at the coffered ceiling, his vision all blurry from post-coital satiation and exhaustion. 

It had been about 2:00 o’clock in the morning when he’d stumbled into Steve after dropping a tipsy Kono off at her new rich boyfriend’s.  And he’s sure that they’d gone at each other for a solid three hours after that.

The alacrity with which they’d taken the party from the building’s opulent lobby to Steve’s place on the fiftieth floor had shocked Danny even as they’d been peeling each other out of their clothes.  And it had surely left the poor night concierge who’d witnessed the first part of their conflagration wishing for some brain bleach.

He thumped a hand against the feeble twitch in his crotch from the recollection of the guy’s poleaxed face over Steve’s tight shoulder as the elevator had slid closed.  Now he had a voyeuristic streak.  This guy – Steve – was bringing out sides of Danny that he didn’t even know he had.

Which was all well and good for someone in a position to pursue those naughty kinks with abandon.  But that wasn’t Danny.  At least, not anymore.

Daniel Williams of Trenton, New Jersey, recently minted police academy graduate and former short-sighted meathead had better things to do.  Saner, more adult-y things than play in that sandbox with a guy – Steve – who in a few short hours had already amply demonstrated his gift for instigation.  See Danny’s naked self in a stranger’s bed for the first time in years.

“Dan?” 

Steve saying the weak-assed alias that Danny had gasped into his mouth when they’d ‘introduced’ themselves (while Steve had been half-way to prepping him) brings Danny back to the present. 

He looks over his shoulder at Danny – when had he even gotten up? – and lifts a dark brown brow. 

“Yeah.  Yeah, Babe” – GD, stop with the Babe! – “go ahead I’ll be right there.”

“’K”, Steve replied easily.  Snagging the bottle of slick and a rubber from the nightstand, he threw Danny a wink before strutting to the bathroom.

Danny waited until his leanly corded back had disappeared through the double doors leading to the en-suite before vaulting up and gathering his clothes.  He was expected at a bar-b-que at his parent’s this afternoon and it went without saying that he’d rather deal with his crazy hoard of relatives than face an awkward goodbye with Steve.

His heart thudded against his ribs as he wrangled his shirt over his head, a situation not helped when he almost fell over tugging on his jeans.  They were almost past his hips when he heard the chirp of his phone from his pocket. 

Unearthing it while buttoning up his fly one-handed, he saw that it was a text from the rookie:

                        _I got soooo laid last night.  Thanks for bringing me here.  You should try it sometime ;)_

The smug winky-face emoticon and Kono’s assumption that he hadn’t gotten any in a bit really got to Danny. So ok, he complained about the state of his love life enough for her to draw the inevitable conclusions.  But did she have to rub it in? 

Before he could reconsider, his thick thumbs were mashing in an error-strewn response:

                          _I get pluinty, thunk you, very mach._

The woman’s fingers had to be made of rubber bands because her response lit up his screen in under ten seconds.

                        _LOLs.  Yeah right._

His pants half-undone, barefoot and mortally offended Danny stared down at his phone.  Then he switched his glare to the gaping doors leading to the room where Steve – all six-foot-some glorious, leanly rippled inch of him – was waiting for Danny.  He was probably gleaming with shower gel and glistening with droplets from the rainfall shower that Danny had drooled over when he’d visited the bathroom last night. 

And Danny was about to pass on having all of that again, why?  Because it wasn’t on his ten thousand-point plan to be a grown-up and to prove to everybody – his family, his former juicehead friends, the triple A-holes down at Police Plaza who rode him daily about his height and his ‘tude – that he could ‘adult’ with the best of them. 

But wasn’t he proving that to them every day?  By donning the uniform, showing up for work on time, resisting the constant urge to plow his fists into some jelly-doughnut guts, pounding the streets, following procedure, remembering his mom’s birthday, staying away from his former crew, exercising regularly, keeping up with his nicotine patch regimen and et cetera into forever?  Yeah, he was. 

And to Danny’s way of thinking – rationalizing – all that straight and narrow time deserved a little detour every now and then.  And that’s what this time with Steve was – a big glaring, orange detour that Danny was going to ride until he got off and was back on his chosen path again. 

He shed his clothes on the way to the bathroom and was in the raw by the time he slid the fogged up shower door open to face Steve. 

Gleaming wet, his short hair spiking up in places, his body looked almost exactly how Danny had pictured it.  A tentatively pleased, almost surprised look crossed his face.

“Thought you’d left,” he confessed against Danny’s lips after hauling him in and caging his body between his braced arms.  “It’s been nearly five minutes. I’m starting to prune up.”

Danny rolled his eyes and ducked under his armpit to go stand beneath the pulsing showerhead. 

Bliss!

Pumping a handful of soap into his palm from the mounted dispenser, he soaped up his pits and chest.  He had a feeling that Steve couldn’t be trusted to keep on task with getting him clean. 

“You prune up after five minutes in the shower?  What are you, a little old lady?”

His guffaw at this own lame joke got muffled and turned into a moan by the crush of Steve’s lips against his.  The way he’d ninja’ed himself between Danny and the water was beyond sneaky. 

Danny forgot and forgave that in favor of reaching up and winding his arms around Steve’s neck. The angle couldn’t have been comfortable for the lug, but he didn’t stop licking into Danny’s mouth to adjust for even a second.

He grunted, displeased, when Steve eventually drew away from him. He pried his eyes open to the sounds of plastic bottles hitting the floor.

Despite the five or so bottles of shampoo and whatnots strew about Steve grinned triumphantly, the bottle of lube held aloft for Danny to see.  He wiggled his eyebrows and leered at Danny like a villain from Vaudeville.

“You wanna?”

Danny, his skepticism writ large in his wide eyes and raised eyebrows, swept a glance around the shower enclosure.  True, it was large enough for six more Steve’s, but except for some built in nooks taller than the top of Danny’s head, there was nothing to hold on to.  And doing it standing up would not work.  The differences in their heights made the angle all wrong. 

Steve rushed to try to convince him otherwise, his hazel eyes gleaming with his hare-brained thoughts.  “It’ll work.  Trust me.”

Considering his earnest expression, Steve’s bobbing, lightly veined cock and the clench in his asshole, Danny relented.  He’d pay for it come Monday morning in the seat of the patrol car, but right now that seemed a long way away.

Pretending hesitation he didn’t feel, he nodded slowly.  “Ok.  But you’re paying my ER bill if I get hurt.”

“I’m never going to let that happen, Dan.”

Disregarding his snotty tone, Danny was oddly touched by the avowal.  To hide it, he pressed his curiously hot face into the smattering of hair between Steve’s pecs.  He stayed there for a minute, then two, enjoying the scent of eucalyptus body wash, man and distilled Steve.

He pressed his thumbs into the notches of his hipbones and rubbed his face against Steve like a touch starved cat.

“’K, Superman.  Whatever you say.” 

He drew Steve’s lips down to his when it looked like he was about to defend his honor again. 

“You wanna argue, or you wanna fuck?” Danny murmured against his mouth after a heated kiss. 

His answer was the snick of the cap of the lube bottle.  


	2. Deal maker Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve 'negotiates'

Steve watched as, for want of a better word for it, Dan moseyed out of the bathroom.  He told himself that it was perfectly understandable that he was still slumped against the shower tile, struggling to fully inflate his lungs while Dan had recovered enough to leave whistling. 

It took another couple of minutes for Steve to muster up the strength to rinse off so that he could join him.  By his estimate, it was a little past 1100, plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the day with Dan in that California King.

Surely not what his mother had intended it for when she’d bought it.  But what she didn’t know….

Shit.  His mother. 

If Doris came back and found Steve here she’d force him to listen to her spiel about joining Flint Logistics again.  And Steve, being the dutiful son his father always insisted he needed to be, would stay and listen.  And wouldn’t that be the most embarrassing thing ever, having Dan witness Steve’s slow death from the thousands of microscopic nicks from his mother’s tongue.

She’d actually been happy when he’d first enlisted, but after Steve spent seven years in the service, she was of the personal opinion that enough was enough. 

“Grangers don’t do career military,” she regularly claimed.  No matter how often Steve reminded her that his last name was McGarrett. 

He usually didn’t mind letting her make her push for him to join the family business in the few weeks he spent on the mainland every year but not this time with so much on his mind. He had some pretty heavy decisions to make and he didn’t want her mucking up the works.

Rubbing at the crease in his forehead, Steve cinched a towel around his waist and walked back into the bedroom.

His stomach grew tight when he saw Dan, standing half-dressed in the middle of the room with his phone pressed to his ear.

So that was it then.

Firming his shoulder to counter his urge to slump, Steve slipped past him and into the walk-in.  He blindly considered the shelf of plain T-Shirts and sturdy cargo pants he kept there.  It took only a couple of minutes for him to wrestle into the clothes.  Long enough for Dan to finish his phone call and disappear without a word.

His towel clutched in his fists, Steve reentered the room, braced for Dan’s absence. Instead he was hunched over on the edge of the bed, his elbows braced on his knees, his face in his hands.

The towel floated to the ground, forgotten, as Steve rushed over and crouched next to him.

The fine tremor in Dan’s shoulders, his tapping feet and his uneven respiration all said anxiety attack to Steve who’d seen his share in traumatized soldiers and civilians. 

“Dan.  Dan, man, look at me,” he urged, trying to pry his hands away so that he could see his face.  His skin felt cool and dry, not clammy at all, under Steve’s hands but it could be that those symptoms just hadn’t set in yet.

After a minute of pleading Dan allowed Steve to draw his hands away from his splotchy face.  And, Steve was grateful to notice, his breathing growing more regular.

“Um, I’m going to head out.”  Springing off the bed, he looked around wildly as if he didn’t quite know where he was. 

“Okkkk,” Steve said, standing up slowly.  He folded his arms across his chest.  He dropped them a moment later, not wanting to appear too defensive.  Too hurt, by Dan’s about face. 

Less than ten minutes ago, they’d been ready to consume each other and now he was going to leave like the chemistry, the heat, between them was only enough to fuel one night? 

Steve lips kicked up to one side in a wry-twist. He was twenty-five and could count his one-nightstands on one hand.  And his partners’ had always slipped away before he could wake up.  So maybe he just didn’t have enough experience to know that a morning-after – even the first-rate one they’d had so far – didn’t equal genuine interest. 

Steve was definitely interested.  And he’d thought he’d seen hints of the same in Dan’s considering looks, his lingering, non-sexual touches and the fond exasperation that colored his voice when he addressed some of Steve’s quirks. But Steve couldn’t discount the possibility that he was wrong.

But he’d never know for sure if he didn’t ask, right?

“Can I see you again?” 

Dan looked up from studying his shoes sharply, as if Steve’s question had been the last one he’d expected.  He shuffled in place and smoothed the side of his hair – a slightly more modest pompadour than he’d flaunted last night.  His blond hair wrangled into the ridiculous style had been the first thing Steve noticed, followed by his cock-of-the-walk gait.

He’d stopped dead in the middle of the lobby because it had taken him a minute to believe that anyone out of a fifties greaser film could pull of the look.

“Steve, buddy” – Dan propped a hand on his hip and chopped the air sideways with the other – “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ve got this… this stuff going on and –“

Uninterested in excuses and trying to hide his disappointment Steve snorted and moved around the bed to sweep up his phone and wallet from the other nightstand. 

“What?” Dan asked, tilting his chin up at a pugnacious angle and glaring over at Steve.  “Don’t snort like an animal at me.  You think I’m lying, then say it to my face.”

Throwing his head back for a second and breathing deeply through his nose, Steve reached for calm.  “I did not say you were lying.  Everyone’s got _stuff,_ Dan.”  It seemed that expansive gesture syndrome was catching because he found himself pin-wheeling his arms before he knew it.  “ _I_ have stuff.  I snorted because that wasn’t what I asked, ok?”

They both fell silent for a minute, then two, breathing hard and glaring at each other across the wrecked bed. 

Steve broke first, shifting his gaze until it fell on the breakfast tray that he’d oh-so-optimistically prepared earlier. 

“It’s Daniel or Danny, ok.”

Danny’s sigh was deep enough to blow the bed linens clean off. 

Steve looked up to see him looking at the remnants of their meal too. The fake-name bit didn’t surprise him.

Danny turned to Steve, a small grin playing along the edges of his lips.  “Nobody but my dick boss calls me Dan.” 

Steve nodded, thinking up another approach.

“Maybe a good place to start would be … would be getting some of that _stuff_ out of the way first.  Then taking it from there?”  He put forth the idea tentatively, afraid that it would be shot down but determined not to give up.

Danny cracked a laugh and plopped down on the bed.  He patted the spot next to him wordlessly, asking Steve to join him.

Steve did, keeping a decorous few duvet squares between them.

“So we’re playing deal breaker roulette pretty early, huh?” He rubbed the back of his neck, looked at Steve from the corner of his eye before looking straight ahead again.  “Ok.  Here’s mine.  In about two months, I’m going to have a kid.” 

Steve’s head shot up and he looked over at Danny with wide eyes.  His gulp was audible in the silence left behind by that doozy.

“Wow.  That’s … wow.”  He chewed on the corner of his lips and sifted through his hundreds of follow-up-questions for the most important one.  It was easy to find.  “So … the mother….”

“My ex.  Rachel.  She wasn’t into the cop bit – revelation number two – and that I swung … um how I swing.”  Danny’s flush raced up from his collar into his face in the span of seconds.

He peeked at Steve again, cleared his throat and straightened his back.  “So, yeah. You going to ante or fold?”

Steve rubbed his palms up and down his thighs and bit his lip.

“I’m on a two week break from the Navy.  I’ve been offered an … opportunity that I have to think about.”

Danny side-eyed him, his cerulean eyes piercing and shrewd.  “This opportunity involve dodging bullets?”

Steve shrugged.  “More like IEDs and dirty bombs.  The bullets are cake compared to those.”

“Cake?”  Danny sprung off the bed, paced away a few steps then back again.  He conducted his invisible off-beat symphony with choppy motions of his hands. “Cake, he says.  Who calls bullets cake?”  He pointed both thumbs at his chest. “Me?  The thousand cops I work with?  The jacked up criminals we deal with all day?”

Steve shakes his head mutely, even knowing that his participation wasn’t needed in Danny’s one-sided conversation.

Danny threw his hands up in supplication, looked up at the ceiling.  “No.  Not a solitary, single one of those comparatively sane persons have ever been so ….” 

He trailed off and Steve helpfully supplied, “Facetious?”

Danny pinned him with a caustic look.  “No, no, no.  Not facetious.”  He jabbed a stiff pointer finger in Steve’s direction.  “Crazy.  That’s the word.  You, my friend, are crazy.”

He fell back to his seat, forking his fingers through the quaff on the top of his head.  Steve waited a beat.  Then another, to make sure that Danny was done.

“A little bit, yeah.”

If Danny was surprised by his agreement, he didn’t show it.

“So… deal breaker?” He crossed his fingers next to his leg where Danny couldn’t see.

Danny shook his head and got up from the bed but he spoke again before the fear could settle in Steve’s stomach.

“No.  Guess I’m a secret masochist.” 

Steve stood up too, his cheek muscles straining from his grin. 

“Great! So, tonight?”

Danny harrumphed and led the way out of the room. 

“Why wait?  Ever been to a Jersey, bar-b-que?”

 


	3. Third Week's the Charm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the third week of Danny and Steve's fledgling relationship and Steve's last week of shore leave. Danny's trying to keep his pessimist tendencies under control and just enjoy their time together. 
> 
> He's made peace with the fact that he'll probably, maybe, possibly need to let Steve go. And in more than the geographical sense. Really he has.
> 
> But what happens when the goof does something so unbelievably ... Steve that it makes Danny have to admit he's too far gone? 
> 
> For Steve, it's just part of his master plan. 'Cause he's made up his mind and he's not letting Danny go. Ever.

"Yo."

Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. The sound of Steve's obnoxious crunching loud in his ear, he made a mental note to shake the sheets out when he got home. "Yo. Yo, he says, like we're frat bros calling to shoot the shit." His sigh ruffled the lapels of his uniform and he wiggled deeper into the cruiser's passenger seat. "That any way to greet the person whose throat your tongue was jammed down this morning, Steven?" 

Steve only munched down louder in his ear and Danny struggled to keep the exasperated fondness from curling his lips. He didn't have time to be amused by Steve's antics. 

It was Kono's turn to get lunch and she'd be back soon with the fancy salads she'd insisted on stopping at the deli across the street for. Danny could not let her see him on the phone with Steve. That way lay plans to drag Danny out for drinks or dinner so that the two could meet, conspire against Danny and talk about their top five favorite sidearms. Danny wasn't ready for that. He'd never be ready for that.

And speaking of meetings out of Danny's near-nightmares...

"I got a favor to ask. See that pink folder on the dining room table?" He rolled his eyes as Steve hemmed and hawed, trying to play as if he wasn't still lolling around Danny's breadbox of an apartment, popping pita chips in his sofa bed. "You see it or not?"

"The table's five feet away from the couch, Danny. Of course I see it." 

Danny heard a rustling of paper that could only be Steve snooping through the folder as if that's what Danny had asked him to do. Danny inhaled deep, reminded himself that Kono could sweet talk or glare her way to rapid-fire service. And that if there positions were flipped, he'd be going through the papers too. Only more discreetly. 

"Hey, we're the same blood type. B positive." Steve's low, deep chuckle forced a flutter in Danny's chest although he could have sworn he was building up a good mad at him just a second ago. "You. B positive. Just goes to show God has a real sense of humor, huh?"

Danny huffed. "Yeah, yeah. The invisible man in the clouds is a shoo-in for open mic night. I'll buy it. Anyway, about that folder. I need you to-"

"You don't believe in God?" Steve interrupted, sounding scandalized down to his thick-soled boots.

Danny massaged between his brows and counted to ten. Then twenty when that didn't work. "That's not what I called to discuss, Steven. Some of us still have work to do this afternoon, you know? Can we get on with it?"

"Good," he said after Steve had grumbled out an agreement. "I need you to run that folder down to this address." He rattled off the address of Rachel's doctor. Making Steve repeat it twice. "Leave it at reception. They need it for Rachel's file and it couldn't wait for our appointment tomorrow for some reason."

"'k", Steve said in a subdued way that pinged Danny's dodgy Steve radar. 

"Thank you." He swung a look at the glossy black French doors of the deli. No sign of Kono yet. "What's with the no questions asked bit? What's the matter?"

Steve blustered for a minute or two until Danny's silence forced a confession. "I still don't get why you don't want me to meet her." Danny could practically hear him scuffing his toe on the carpet. 

Recently, Steve had been advocating hard to meet Rachel. And although Danny hadn't come right out with the hard no, he'd been unable to hide his reluctance. And the worst part? He knew that it was because, despite feelings for Steve that grew stronger every day, he just didn't believe. Believe that they could have a future beyond Steve leaving for his post next week. Certainly not any belief in his ability to endure Rachel's sympathetic eyes when the inevitable breakup came. Having the person who broke your heart have a front row seat to another unspeakably attractive brunette stomping it into the dust again. Yeah, no thanks.

Instead of saying all that, he tried, once again, to put off the unwinnable argument. "We'll talk about it later."

His chest tightened at the sad quality behind Steve's snort of disbelief. "I really appreciate this, yeah?"

"Yeah, yeah," Steve said, the usual hint of haughtiness back in his voice. Thank the invisible man in the clouds. 

They said their goodbyes, Danny promising to stop for beer if Steve promised to not try to cook on his camp stove again. 

And just in time too, because there was the rookie, shouldering out of the deli. She tossed a light paper bag and some cutlery in Danny's lap before settling behind the wheel, some kind of deep green wrap already snug between her small, sharp teeth. 

Danny sneaked a look into the bag, disheartened to see a container bearing the words 'quinoa' and 'arugula' on the front. 

"This wasn't what I had in mind when we made that bet, you know?" he said, drawing out the clam shell, popping it open and looking at the damp greenery with open distaste. 

He'd won that bet about when the thing on Agnesta's neck would pop fair and square, which meant the rookie owed him a filling lunch for the rest of the week. This mess wouldn't satisfy a seventy pound child. 

"Cram it. You said lunch. You didn't say I couldn't choose." Kono replied, not-at-all sweetly.

Danny crammed it, stuffing arugula into his mouth like it was his job. 

They ate in companionable silence, the crackle of the radio with non-distress calls soothing background noise for their munching. Kono started the car while Danny climbed out to dunk their trash when they were done. But instead of driving off after he'd snapped his belt back into place, she turned to look at him, her arm hooked over the steering wheel

"You know I have your landline, don't you?"

Ignoring the frisson behind his neck at her silky tone, Danny raised his palms up in a 'so what?' gesture. Like he didn't have an iota where she was going with this. He knew exactly where she was going with it.

Kono gave him one last significant rise of her eyebrow before she perched her aviators on the delicate bridge of her nose. "Just thought I'd give you a heads-up before calling it and asking Steve out for drinks myself."

Danny gulped and tried not to squirm. He cleared his throat. "So, Friday night at Paddy's, good?"

Kono smiled, all serene and smug. "Perfect, brah. Friday night's perfect."


End file.
